The largest public art program in Canadian history

Under the guidance and supervision of Group of Seven members A.J. Casson and A.Y. Jackson, the most renowned Canadian artists came together during World War II to create a unique war effort art project. At the Government of Canada’s request and in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada, some of these artists’ best and most inspirational works were selected and meticulously reproduced as oil silkscreens by Sampson-Matthews Limited, Canada’s leading colour printing production firm in the mid-twentieth century. These works were originally produced for the Canadian troops abroad who used them to decorate their barracks, ships, hospitals and mess halls, to boost morale, and to remind them of their homeland and what they were fighting for. At the same time and during the decades after the war, these works were also hung in schools, libraries, banks, government offices, embassies, consulates and corporate offices throughout Canada and abroad. Today they are widely recognized for their defining contribution to the way Canadians view their nation. They reinforced the Group of Seven’s motherhood role in the history of Canadian art and popularized the imagery of landscape as the primary Canadian visual motif.

Launched in 1942 and lasting for 21 years, the Sampson-Matthews Limited silkscreen project was the largest public art program in Canadian history. In its annual report of 1944-45, the National Gallery of Canada advised that these silkscreens were found across the Allied world and stressed the value of this publicity for Canada. The Globe and Mail called the program one of the most interesting and successful cultural projects undertaken in Canada. Exhibitions of these works were seen around the world. Author and artist Douglas Coupland, who has used these silkscreens in his own contemporary art, described the project as the branding of the nation.

The idea was the brainchild of four important Canadians: A.Y. Jackson, painter and leading advocate of the Group of Seven; H.O. “Harry” McCurry, director of the National Gallery of Canada; Charles “Chuck” Matthews, general manager and founding partner of Sampson-Matthews Limited; and A.J. Casson, artist, chief designer at Sampson-Matthews Limited, and member of the Group of Seven. Already known for producing art, advertising, recruitment, propaganda and other communication materials of the highest quality, Sampson-Matthews used the still-new technology of silkscreening (serigraphy — the method later made famous by Andy Warhol and used by contemporary artists including Ryan McGinness and Shepard Fairey) to produce handcrafted prints from a “who’s who” of Canada’s leading artists in cooperation with the National Gallery of Canada. Commercial sponsors from corporate Canada funded the production of each work (including a fee to the artists), and the Department of National Defence managed logistics and shipped the works to where Canadian soldiers were stationed during the Second World War. Many pieces were kept in Canada and sold in retail stores such as Eaton’s and through promotional programs with institutions such as the CBC, Sunnybrook Hospital, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Ontario Association of Teachers. From the 1940s through the 1970s these silkscreens were hugely popular and shaped Canadian notions of art and identity. 36 designs were produced during the war and another 81 images after 1945.

Produced more than 60 years ago, this collection of original handcrafted silkscreen prints includes artworks of the Group of Seven and other distinguished Canadian men and women from British Columbia to Atlantic Canada including Lawren Harris, J.W. Morrice, Arthur Lismer, A.J. Casson, Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, and others. The original paintings upon which these images are based can be found in the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and other important institutions. These silkscreens are not copies or mechanical reproductions — they are original, hand-pulled silkscreen artworks produced under the supervision of A.J. Casson, Vice President and Creative Director of Sampson-Matthews Limited at the time of their production.

Sampson-Matthews Limited produced these works between 1942 and 1963 and, though printed at the time in unnumbered series in large quantity, they are considered very rare today. Of those shipped overseas, most did not survive the war or make it back to Canada, and many more perished in the decades after. Hugely popular from the 1940s through the 1970s, by the 1980s the works had grown out of favour. More recently interest has re-ignited. Joyce Zemans, a distinguished professor of art history at York University, published scholarly articles on the collection in the Journal of Canadian Art History between 1995 and 2004. In 2015, Ian Sigvaldason and Scott Steedman published a researched, illustrated history of the print program — the hardcover Art For War and Peace, available through this website. Works from the collection have shown in commercial galleries across Canada and appeared in the exhibition “Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything” at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

By 1963 Sampson-Matthews had ended the silkscreen print program and, in 1968, the firm was sold. By the early 1980s Sampson-Matthews Limited had closed and ceased to exist for the next 30+ years. Unknown to anyone until 1990, a remaining inventory of silkscreens survived, stored safely but anonymously in the estate of Charles Matthews. These were located by Max Merkur, a Toronto land developer and art collector who knew the program’s history and suspected a remaining inventory existed. In 1990, with a private investigator’s help, he located Charles Matthews’ three daughters (difficult, as they had different married names) and found each held small piles of original works in their homes. Merkur purchased all of the remaining works.

Shortly after, Merkur reached out to A.J. Casson and told him he had located the Sampson-Matthews “mother lode.” Casson visited the storage facility and inspected the anthology, confirming the works were what remained of the original handcrafted oil silkscreens he had supervised years before. Though in his 90s, he painstakingly authenticated each work, signing and writing “Supervised by A.J. Casson” on the face of each piece. Pieces he had personally translated from painting to silkscreen — including images by Emily Carr, Tom Thomson, and Casson himself — he simply signed “A.J. Casson.” All existing silkscreens with either signature come from this last stash of original inventory. Shortly after authenticating them, Casson died at 94 — the last surviving member of the Group of Seven.

The entire collection of remaining silkscreens, now signed by Casson, was acquired from Max Merkur by the present organisation in 1992 and held for almost 30 years in a climate-controlled art storage facility. A number of pieces have been sold to organisations and galleries across Canada. Given the direct lineage to the original founders, Sampson-Matthews Limited has been reinstated to share these works and their history, offering the very last pieces from the original collection for sale.